“I can’t breathe” in the Broome County Jail

“Strip, N-word!”  That’s what Broome County correctional officers told Taej’on Vega after dragging the prone and handcuffed Black/Latino teenager across the floor to his cell.  It got more brutal quickly, leaving Vega badly bruised and traumatized.

Similar stories have for years been repeated from cell to cell, from incarcerated persons to parents and friends.  In this case, however, evidence exists. For Vega and his mother are courageously persistent, and Legal Services of Central New York admirably stepped in and filed a lawsuit on behalf of Mr. Vega.

Violence vs Black Youth, Again

Vega was not alone: women, Black, Latinx, and the poor are vastly overrepresented in the jail, and those with medical and disability conditions are even more vulnerable. Mr. Vega, at the age of 19, was in that difficult position: his fiercely dedicated mother couldn’t visit, and the jail would prove a punishing place.

Mr. Vega had attended Johnson City High School with a recognized disability, including Bipolar Disorder and ADHD, but had not graduated. When he entered the jail he was knowingly denied meds for his previous prescriptions of Adderall, Geodon, Lexapro, and Risperdal.

What happened on February 10^th is detailed in the lawsuit. As part of a shakedown search, correctional officers entered his unit in riot gear.  Vega was ordered to lay down flat on the floor—and he did, on his stomach.  As officers passed by, he asked how their day was going. For that, an officer pressed his knee on Vega’s neck and pressed his thumb on the nerves there.  Sergeant Daniel Weir then ordered two officers, Richard Hrebin and Corey Fowler, to take Vega to his cell. They handcuffed him, dragged him to his cell by his outstretched arms, and proceeded to beat and slap him on the head, body and back steadily calling him the n-word.  They then uncuffed and told him to “strip, n-word,” and proceeded to perform a search of his genitals and anus to humiliate him.

Court papers with these details recount that he was held so tight he could not breathe, was shaken twice, and told “do what you’re told, n-word.” After all this, they destroyed his few personal items in the cell, including family pictures, and repeatedly flushed his sheets in the cell’s toilet.  Vega was then left naked in his cell, traumatized and in pain, and coughing up blood.  Other officers heard Vega being pounced on, dragged to his cell and the noise of the beating, but did not intervene.

Punishing Grievances, Institutionalized Racism

On February 12^th Vega filed grievances at the urging of his mother, who obtained the following pictures of his bruised and swollen face and body from a video call.

These injuries were also visible to members of the community organization, Justice and Unity for the Southern Tier (JUST), including the author, who visited Mr. Vega as volunteers, as part of a program that visits vulnerable persons in the jail who don’t have family and often need a watchful presence.

On February 14^th his grievance was found to have “no merit” and denied. 

This is not an isolated case. Persons incarcerated in the jail have, in the past, openly commented on the institutionalized racism there, reporting to local organizers that officers refer to their batons as “n-word sticks,” and that they have “been called N-word, monkey, and other degrading names… when we speak up we get punished by being put in the box [solitary]”.

In 2018 the County and the Sheriff lost a major lawsuit over abuse of youth in the jail. As one expert witness testified, confirming what local youth advocates have long known,

“All the juveniles spoke of the harsh and abusive practices [of] the Correctional Officers (COs) with many identifying in exquisite detail the beatings they endured at the hands of the COs’…. [a] youth spoke of an incident in which he was restrained in a restraint chair and then pepper sprayed while he was restrained. Still another youth spoke of the COs carrying batons they used to beat the kids; they reported that the COs refer to the baton as their “n-word  [sic] beaters.”

Taej’on and his mother have considerable courage, for it is well known that even attempts to file a grievance often result in retaliation by correctional officers. To pursue any public or legal case, however, one must legally have filed grievances. This Taej’on did, with retaliation that followed.  There is no expectation of grievances being heard, even at the state level: those that get filed and sent to the State Commission of Correction are so often denied in their entirely that the State Comptroller in 2018 investigated and denounced the SCOC’s almost total rejection of all grievances.

Medical Maltreatment and Death

The lack of medical treatment is equally long-term and deadly. A recent survey of jail deaths in NY State by USA today, published in the local newspaper, featured the Broome County Jail prominently for good reasons. In 2014 the NY State Attorney general investigated, reprimanded, and fined the County jail’s private medical provider—yet that contract was renewed repeatedly by the County.

The County and the medical provider, Correctional Medical Care, have also lost a series of wrongful death suits, brought in the rare instances when families can mount a long and expensive legal case.  These include the 2011 death of Alvin Rios who was left “in an emergent, life-threatening status without appropriate medical attention” before dying in his cell on July 20, 2011. Questioned about multiple deaths and the lawsuit, County Sheriff David Harder blew it off, telling the media that deaths “will happen.”  In 2015, Salladin Barton, developmentally disabled and well known and liked on the streets of Binghamton, pleaded with his family: “The guards are going to kill me. You gotta get me outta here.”  He died shortly thereafter. The Sheriff’s response to Barton’s family lawsuit was equally cold and blunt:   “It’s a bunch of crap.”

A Federal Court judge had the last word however, issuing a blistering judgement in favor of Salladin’s Barton’s mother, Rose Carter, declaring

As a result of the ongoing failure by CMC to provision appropriate medical care to inmates at the County Jail, and the failure by these policymaking defendants to intervene to correct it, Barton died while in the County’s custody.”

The Judge went much further, declaring

“Sheriff Harder and/or Administrator Smolinsky, in their roles as policymakers for the Jail, possessed abundant knowledge about CMC’s egregious misconduct, knew that CMC was actively engaged in this misconduct at the County Jail, and yet failed to take any corrective action to prevent the substantial risk of harm those policies and practices posed to the inmates in their custody.

Another case, by the parents of Thomas Husar, is underway, seeking $5 million in damages for the death of their seriously ill son. His cries for help were ignored for at least 12 hours by correctional officers on November 2019—pleas echoed by other inmates. Lawsuits, like those on behalf of Thomas Husar and Taej’on Vega, remain the lonely possibility for unearthing brutality and corruption:  there is not even the most minimal county or state oversight of jail operations.  A recent state law requires police departments and county sheriffs to release disciplinary records, as might be filed for officers investigated and discharged for sexual abuse, regular drinking on the job, or bringing methamphetamines into the jail in exchange for thousands of dollars—all allegations reported to those with family members in the Broome County jail. Sheriff Harder refuses however to release any records, declaring in defiance of state law that he possesses no disciplinary records at all—as seen in multiple, denied replies to freedom-of-information requests.

And Now? Fire Harder, Terminate CMC, Investigate

The formerly incarcerated, the families of the incarcerated and the dead, and local community organizers have now collected and reported a long list of abuses and deaths to state authorities, including to the NY State Attorney General. They have testified before the state legislature.  Letters have been written to legislative leaders in Albany again regarding the brutalities meted out to Taej’on Vega. This June local community organizations called upon the Governor to remove the Sheriff from office and terminate the county’s contract with the private medical company.  Independent, open, and community-based investigation and oversight is dramatically needed. It is far past time for our elected officials to act.  How many more beatings, how many more deaths, must pass before they take action?

Bill Martin is a founding member of Justice and Unity for the Southern Tier and Bartle Professor in the Sociology Department of the State University of New York at Binghamton.

An earlier, shorter version of this report was distributed by Justice and Unity for the Southern Tier.